HIV vaccine trials discontinued

[SoonerCoug]

http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/news/newsr..._statement.htm

A couple of years ago, I had lunch the guy who discovered HIV, and he told me that HIV vaccines were a massive waste of time and effort. I guess he was right. I guess they were immunizing Haitians and South Africans because they would be at higher risk.

It's amazing how much money gets poured into HIV research, and also how much success they've had in developing antiviral drugs to treat HIV.

I don't understand the vaccine thing, though. It only takes one HIV virus to integrate its genetic material into the host DNA, and then it's all over. I don't understand why they've had this massive undertaking to do something that was already thought by many experts to be pointless + impossible.

[SoonerCoug]

I guess this is the reason why they were doing it. Here's an excerpt from a discussion of HIV vaccines:

"HIV, on the other hand, belongs to a family of viruses known as retroviruses that are almost impossible for the body to eliminate. Soon after infection, HIV invades the cells that are meant to destroy it - white blood cells known as CD4 cells. It sneaks across the protective outer membrane of the CD4 cells and then - like other retroviruses - splices copies of itself into the chromosomes of its host. Safely inside the body's own DNA, HIV can lie dormant for years, completely invisible to the surrounding immune defenses.

Professor Ian Ramshaw, an HIV vaccine researcher from the John Curtin School of Medical Research in Canberra says the virus is "like a Star Wars ship that cloaks itself and hides away from the immune system".

This biological invisibility trick makes fending off HIV-infection extremely difficult, and the task of creating a 100 percent-effective vaccine almost impossible. Instead, researchers hope a vaccine will strengthen the body's reaction to HIV once infected - postponing the onset of AIDS - and lower levels of the virus in body fluids to minimize the chances of transmission during intercourse."

[Mindfulcoug]

The development of an effective HIV vaccine is a priority for BM research world wide ,yet there are many talented scientists whose crazy ideas would have no chance to get funded .

The success of developing an effective SIV vaccine ( which creats disease in macaques ) was actually quite encouraging due to the molecularly closely relation to HIV.

The new generation of HIV vaccines which are a combination of initially immunization with a DNA vaccine ( SIV or HIV genes packaged in mamalian DNA vector) ,followed by a boosting canarypax ( a vector carrying HIV genes) have yielded some of most promisting result to date!

Since HIV actually targets the immune system Generals ( TCD4) ,it would be a nightmare for immune system to defeat it .. beside the secret life which HIV acquires during the latent phase ,it has an extremely high rate of mutation , in a way that in an infected person ,EVERY possible point mutation in the viral genome occurs EVERY day !

So any possible specific weapon produced by immune system against HIV would not be truely effective ,due to inaccessiblity and mutation ..hence always failure.

Despite the fact that some vaccines have been used to fortified immune system As it was pointed out in the report ....some approaches have been ceased due to lack of significant results ,so there would be a shift in strategy to begin with ...but i cannot think they would stop the whole project ..

Almost all current facts had been veiled behind dark clouds of impossibilites for many years and if it wasnot becuase of human desire to know ,they wouldnot have been emerged.

By and large it is too early to express disappointment and regret toward the money and time spending on science research particulary when you think to the amount of money that the gun industries have engulfed, which is indeed crazy and a loss .